PARLEYINGS
Evelyn acted on her father's suggestion that she ask some friends to visit her, and she summoned two of her classmates to come out for the carnival. She told Raridan of their coming one evening when they were alone, and he began propounding inquiries about them with the zealous interest, half mocking and half earnest, which he always manifested in girls that crossed his horizon.
"And Miss Warren—is she the one from Dedham Crossing, Connecticut? Yes, I suppose they will want to go right out to see the Indians. I'll see if the War Department won't lend us a few from a reservation to show off with. It's too bad for our guests to be disappointed. And Miss Marshall—she's from Virginia? It will really be rather amusing to bring the types together on our rude frontier."
"But you're not to play tricks with these friends of mine, Warrick Raridan. You are to be very nice to them, but you are not to make too much of an impression—unless—!"
"I'm afraid Miss Warren's a trifle too serious for human nature's daily food," he said, complainingly.
"Yes? I remember that she was strong in entomology. She surely knows a moth from a bumblebee when she sees it."
"Tut! tut! One shouldn't be spiteful. Miss Warren is a nice girl. She knows where the pussy willows purr first in the harsh Connecticut spring. She is strong on golden rod and ah-tum leaves; she reads 'Sesame and Lilies' once a week, and Channing's 'Symphony' hangs in her room in blue and gold. She's very sweet with her Sunday School class. She shall be saluted with the Chautauqua salute—thus!" He flourished his handkerchief at a picture on the wall.
"How brutal! Deliver me from the cynical man! By the way, Warry, I saw Minnie Metchen in New York this spring, and she asked me all the questions about you she dared. That really wasn't good of you. She hadn't been an army girl long—her father was a new paymaster, or something like that; she wasn't fair game. You were her first, and she thought you meant it all,—the poems and the flowers and all that kind of thing. She thought you were very good, too. You remember, I hope, that you dragged her across town to that colored mission where you were lay-reading at the time. Now, you mustn't do that any more."
Raridan buried his face in his hands and groaned.
"My sins are more than I can bear. But I'm really disappointed in you. It isn't good form in this town to remember from one winter to another what my enthusiasms have been. But, Evelyn—"
His manner changed suddenly and he rose and walked the floor. He was so full of mockery, and his fun took so many unexpected turns, that Evelyn, who had known him from his wilful, spoiled childhood, was never sure of his moods. He seemed very serious as he stood before her with his arms folded and looked at her. His voice broke a little as he said:
"Evelyn, I don't want you to remember this kind of thing of me. Nobody takes me seriously; I'm getting tired of it. I'm all kinds of a failure. I ought to be doing things, like all the other men here. Maybe it's too late—"
"No, it's never too late to do what we want to do, Warry," she said very kindly. "But I don't know that you're such a failure." She was still on guard for some flash of the joke that he was always playing.
"But it's a question with me whether I haven't lost my chance," he persisted. He sat down, dejectedly. Then he laughed.
"Do you know why I'm like the Juniata River?" he demanded.
"I'm not good at guessing," she answered, wondering whether he was laying a trap for her.
"Why, Captain Wheelock told somebody that it was because I am very beautiful and very shallow." He did not laugh with her.
"Those things aren't funny to me any more," he declared, scowling.
"But to be called beautiful—"
"No man is beautiful," he returned savagely. "No man wants to be called that. It's my eye-glasses, I suppose." He took them off and played with them. "Maybe they do make me look dudish. I'd wear spectacles if they didn't cut my ears. Or I might go without and come to a sudden end by walking over some lonely precipice." He expected her to remonstrate, but she said:
"Well, I'll promise not to tell the new visitors about you;" as if, of course, this was what he had been leading up to.
"I don't care anything about them."
"I'm sorry. I had rather counted on you, as the only person here who has met them,—and an old friend of the family."
He stood up again.
"But I don't want to be your friend—"
"Oh!" She seized and fortified all the strategic positions. "This is certainly surprising in you, Warrick Raridan, after all the years I've known you. I didn't expect to be renounced so early." He stood looking at her quizzically, and too fixedly for her comfort.
"Tragedy doesn't become the Juniata type of beauty. You'd better sit down." He had been pacing the floor, but now threw himself into a chair.
"That chair," she continued, "is a relic of the Inquisition. If you'll move those cushions about a little on the divan you'll be a lot more comfortable."
He mumbled that he didn't want to be comfortable, but obeyed.
"Now, if you'll be good," she went on tranquilly, folding her arms and looking at him benignantly, "I'll tell you a secret."
He had thrust his hands into his pockets and sat watching her sulkily.
"Well?"
"I'm to be queen of the ball, sir, I'm to be queen of the ball."
"I'm sorry I can't congratulate you," he said grimly. "You have no business mixing up with their infernal idiocy. I've been expecting to hear that you'd refused." He grew hot as he went on. "Your father oughtn't to make you do such a thing."
"Warry!" She sat up straight and bent toward him in an attitude of remonstrance; "you really mustn't! Why, I'm amazed at you!"
The enormity of the thing, as Raridan saw it, had grown on him since his talk with Saxton, and he did not relent; but he relaxed his severity for the moment, to assume an aggrieved air.
"Maybe I'm presuming too far on old acquaintance!" he said gloomily.
"I still have that copy of Aldrich you gave me once,—you remember that they
Smiling, tranquil-eyed—
Not even the least little beat
Of the heart, upon either side!'
But,—should old acquaintance be forgot?" she hummed. He was still a spoilt boy who had to be coaxed into good humor.
"You know what I mean, Evelyn. I feel a particular interest in having you start right here, now that you've come home to stay. People will be surprised to hear of your taking a part like that; they want to take you seriously. You've been to college—"
"Oh, Warry!" she cried appealingly. "And are you to throw this at me? A few minutes ago you were complaining that people wouldn't take you seriously, but I'm afraid they want to take me much too seriously. I don't like it! In fact, I don't intend to have it!"
"But you don't mean to get down to a level with these girls who've been ground out of boarding schools, and who don't know anything? The kind that play badly on the piano, or sing worse, and come home to mix Fifth Avenue boarding school with Missouri River every-day life!"
"I'm really disappointed in you. I supposed you weren't like the others. A few days ago some estimable women called here to get me to become a candidate for school commissioner. They talked beautifully to me. There was one of them, a Miss Morris—" Raridan extended his arms to Heaven, as if imploring mercy—"who told me that I was a bachelor of arts and that all kinds of things were therefore to be expected of me."
"But I don't mean that! It's just that sort of thing I think you ought to keep free from,—it's this awful publicity; it's making yourself public property! Women must keep out of such things. School commissioner!" His spirits were rising again and he laughed aloud.
"Wouldn't you vote for me?"
He stared. "You're not going to—"
"Decidedly not. I want you to understand, and everybody to find out that I'm a very ordinary being. I hope if I've learned anything in college it's common sense. I don't feel a bit interested in regulating the universe, or in getting more rights for women, or in politics of any kind, any more than every sane woman is interested in such things. About this carnival and the ball, I don't mind telling you that I dislike it particularly. But I'm going to do it for two reasons, to be much franker with you than you deserve; to please father, for whom I can do very little, and to set at rest this idea about my being a divinely gifted individual who has come home from college to rub up the universe with a witch cloth. And now, Warrick Raridan, we will, if you please, consider the incident closed; and if you are very good you may dance with me at the ball."
"Oh, the noble king will have first place there."
"Well, if you're the king you can't object," she said. "I'm sure I don't know who the king's to be—"
"Well, I do—"
"Then you needn't tell me, please. I want to be surprised."
"But he's likely to be somebody you won't care to know under any circumstances," he persisted. His contempt for the carnival and his rage at the thought of this girl being publicly identified with Wheaton rose in him and he grew morose again. Evelyn, seeing another storm, approaching and wishing to restore his good humor, returned to her expected guests and her plans for entertaining them.
It must be confessed that in her heart Evelyn was one of those who, in Raridan's own phrase, did not take him seriously. She had seen more of him than of any other man. She had a great fondness for him, and she was glad to find that after her absences he always came to the house as if there had been no break, and took up their pleasant comradeship where they had left it. She had speculated not a little as to the violent flirtations which he carried on so openly, and had wondered whether he would sometime grow serious in one of them, and what manner of girl would finally steady him and win him to a real affection. She did not understand the mood that had swayed him, or that seemed about to sway him to-night; but a woman's natural instinct in such matters had warned her that he wanted to change their old attitude toward each other, and she knew that she did not want to change it. She liked his gentleness, his humor and his generous impulses. She had seen enough of the world to know that the qualities which set him apart from most men were rare. His likings in themselves were unusual, and though they were not sincere enough for his own good, they constituted an element of charm in him. His easy susceptibility was amusing; and it was no more marked in flirtations with girls than in dallyings with books or pictures or music. He was certainly a delightful companion, almost as satisfactory to talk to as a bright girl! She felt, though, that there was a real power in him; she could dramatize him in situations where he would be a leader of forlorn hopes on battlefields; but she stopped short of loving him; she had, she told herself, no idea of loving any one now; but neither did she wish to lose a friend who was so entirely agreeable and charming. She resolved as they sat talking of perfectly safe matters, that their old footing must be maintained, and she felt confident that she could manage this.
"Don't you like John Saxton very much?" he asked, and she felt that the day was saved when he would talk of another man. "I like him better all the time."
"Yes; people are saying agreeable things about him. But he's pretty serious, isn't he?"
"Well, that makes him a good companion for me, you know. Acute gaiety is diagnosed as my chief trouble," he said, a little bitterly. He was trying to feel his way back to the talk of an hour ago, but she had resolved not to have it so.
"It's very nice of you to be kind to him."
"If you mean that I bring him up here, that isn't kindness, it's just ordinary decent humanity."
He was cheerful again, and he went away assuring her that he would be at the station to meet the approaching visitors the following afternoon. He abused himself, as he went down the hill toward the electric lights of the city, for having permitted Evelyn to defeat him in what he had intended to say. He stopped on the long viaduct that spanned the railway tracks and looked moodily down on the lights of the switch targets and the signal lanterns of the trainmen. Then he turned his eyes toward the Porter house which stood darkly against the starlit sky among the trees. As he looked a light flashed suddenly in the tower. He laughed softly to himself as he turned with a quickened step on his way.
"Maybe it's Evelyn, and maybe it's the cook; but any lady in a tower! The thought of it doth please me well.”